Brave
by Hecate's Wrath
Summary: Andromeda learns what it means to be brave. (When Andromeda was five, she thought Bellatrix was brave. That hasn't changed.) T for strong language.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

AN: I think that Andromeda gets so romanticized in fanfic. And maybe it _was_ romantic, but it's hard to throw your family away, and I think that that would be a decision that haunted Andromeda for the rest of her life.

* * *

It just isn't fair. At the end of it all, that's all Andromeda's got, that is just isn't fair. That's all she can think, sitting in the Great Hall with her screaming grandbaby. It isn't _fair_. They were the good guys—this _isn't supposed to happen_ to the good guys. She gave up her sisters for love and now it's all gone, all torn away, shattered like glass on the ground. Her daughter is dead. Her husband is dead. Her sister is dead. Her dreams are dead.

* * *

Andromeda is five. Her mother turns to her sharply and Andromeda stands taller. She is a _lady_ and ladies don't slouch.

"I expect you to behave," she tells her daughters—tells _Bellatrix_, who is seven and daring and Andromeda is a good girl, a good _lady_, but Bellatrix does what she likes. Bellatrix is brave and brash. Andromeda is not brave. She is a lady. "Act like ladies," her mother says. "And if we should get separated—" here, her mother's eyes flash to Bellatrix who is eyeing the candy store and not listening—"We will meet in the back left corner. _Am I understood_?" Her mother's question is sharp, like glass, and Bellatrix flicks her Black eyes back and nods reluctantly.

Andromeda nods too, and she feels Narcissa's hand in her own. She is five. She is a lady. She is not brave, but she is a Black, and Blacks don't need to be brave, only obedient. Andromeda is obedient. Not brave.

* * *

Andromeda is eleven. It is August 28th and in four days, she will follow Bellatrix to Hogwarts and she will be a real witch. For today, she is running errands with her mother and they are getting ready to enter the Apothecary and Druella turns to smile at her middle daughter. "Back left corner, Andromeda," her mother says, and Andromeda nods.

She feels very big and terribly important—Druella asked _her_, not Cissy, not Bella—_Andromeda_ to come with her. And she didn't give Andromeda the lady talk—because Andromeda _is_ a lady, a little proper lady. And her mother asked _her_ to come along.

She is not brave, not like Bellatrix, but her mother loves her the most, and that is worth more than all of Bellatrix's bravery.

* * *

Andromeda is sixteen and Ted Tonks (even though he is a Muggle, even though her parents and Bella and Cissy would just _die, even though_) is seventeen and the most handsome thing she's ever seen. She is a bookworm, but she borrowed a little bit of Bella's brave and one night at dinner, she slips Ted-Tonks-the-Muggle a note. _Back left corner of the library, 10pm_, it says in her neat cursive. She signs it with a single "a" and feels daring and brave and alive.

She feels nothing like a lady when Ted kisses her senseless. She feels like a whore, and she _loves it_. Ted kisses like he means it, with passion and fire. He's a much better kisser than Lucius and maybe it's the Muggle blood, she thinks, drunk on Ted's fire-kisses. Maybe the Muggle blood is what sets her Pure pedigree blood on fire. Maybe it's the Muggle blood that makes her brave.

* * *

Andromeda is nineteen and Ted dares her to be brave, with a tiny diamond in a tiny box and she can't. She _can't_.

Three months later, she says she _can_.

(She almost regrets it.)

* * *

She is twenty and Narcissa is crying and Bellatrix is angry and she can't believe she's throwing her sisters away, she can't believe Ted is worth this, but he is. He _is_.

"Cissa, I—" Andromeda starts, but the words die in her throat. Is she sorry? Is she sorry for this? "I—I'll meet you in the back left corner," she says finally, her words quiet.

Her sister cries.

Andromeda does not feel brave. She feels sick.

* * *

She is twenty and she is so far from ready to be a mother it's nearly comical.

Only it's not, because _this is her life, this is her baby's life_ they're talking about. Her baby—Merlin. She isn't ready to have a baby. _They_ aren't ready to have a baby—Ted is still trying to figure out how he's going to support the two of them—they can't afford three, they can't afford an us, or a we, or a family any bigger than Andy and Ted. They_ can't_, and yet they must, so they do.

Seven months later, she names the baby Nymphadora and wonders how she ever did without. Nymphadora gives Andromeda her own brand of bravery.

_This_ is why she said yes. This is why she left her sisters.

* * *

Andromeda is twenty-four and Nymphadora is four and so much like her Aunt Bellatrix it's terrifying. She is a whirlwind. The child never sits still, and it is more than four year old energy that makes her that way. Nymphadora tests limits, and Andromeda wonders if this is her payback for abandoning the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. (It would be fitting, that she would raise a daughter as brave and brash and _fearless_ as the sister she left behind.)

* * *

Andromeda is twenty-six and Nymphadora is six and Andromeda _wants to scream_. She's sure someone, somewhere in her family has Metamorphagus blood, but she doesn't know where it came from and _Merlin and Hecate_ but she never wants to raise one, ever again.

_She doesn't mean that_. She didn't mean that, and she takes it back over and over and over again when she loses the brother or the sister Nymphadora _might have had_ if only she hadn't wished against them.

She can be brave, she promises the universe. She can be brave, if they'll just give her another baby. She will be brave for all of them.

* * *

Andromeda is thirty-one and Nymphadora is bright eyed and purple-haired on the September 1st her train pulls out.

"Please be good," Andromeda says, kneeling down in front of her daughter. "Please, please, please, Nymphadora. _Be good_."

Nymphadora smiles impishly. "I'm always good," she says and Andromeda sighs.

Her daughter wraps her skinny arms around her mother's neck. "Love you," she says quietly, and then smiles, skipping onto the train.

Andromeda can't breathe for one-two-three-four-five heartbeats. She is not brave enough to send Nymphadora out into a world that might hate her, might love her, might eat her alive.

* * *

Andromeda is thirty-six when Nymphadora announces that she's going to be an Auror, and it's too much.

_It is too fucking much_.

Her sister is a Death Eater (is in Azkaban) and her other sister is married to a Death Eater and now her baby is going to catch Death Eaters? It's the worst joke the universe has ever played on anybody—Andromeda still loves her sisters, despite what they've become. If Nymphadora ever caught them, Andromeda would beg for their lives because _they are still her sisters_.

"Please, Nymphadora," Andromeda says softly. "Please don't do this."

But she does, and Andromeda is proud (of course she's proud), but her heart breaks. Her baby is too brave, to bold, too brash.

* * *

Andromeda is forty-three and Remus Lupin is closer to _her_ age than he is to Nymphadora's, and he is a _werewolf_.

Andromeda is not tolerant. She thinks—she _knows_—werewolves are monsters and _she will not_ have her daughter marrying a monster. (The monster turns out to be on Andromeda's side.)

And Dumbledore calls her aside and says "for love, Andromeda" and she wants to just slap him. For love? She'll give him for love—she left her sisters and her family and _everything_ _for love_ and now Dumbledore has the sheer _audacity_ to lecture her about love taking precedence over everything.

For love? She'll give him for love. She _loves_ Ted, loves Nymphadora, _would not trade them for the world_, but she also loves her sisters. And how does she give up one love and keep the other? For love? She lost love to gain love, and she can never—never!—get that back and Dumbledore doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. She's been brave for love, she's been brave and _look at what it cost her_.

Nymphadora marries Remus. Andromeda cries.

* * *

Andromeda is forty-four and much too young to be a grandmother. That is what she tells Nymphadora crisply when Nymphadora stumbles over the word "pregnant" in Andromeda's parlor.

Things haven't been the same, since Nymphadora married the monster. Things have not been the same between mother and daughter and Andromeda wants to _try_ to mend her relationship, but a part of her thinks (vindictively) that _now_ her daughter might understand—now, Nymphadora knows the hell Andromeda went through when she married Ted. Now she knows the cost of bravery.

Choices are not easy, and should not be made lightly.

* * *

Andromeda is forty-four and she _cannot breathe_. Ted went on the run, but he was always alive, she just knew it, just felt it in her bones, but when the young man on her doorstep says no, no, he's been dead _five days_, Andromeda just can't breathe.

Where was she five days ago? She can't even remember—that had been when Ted was still alive, to her. Still alive and on the run and _still alive and coming home to her_. Someday.

And now he's not, and the ground falls out from under her.

Ted was why she was brave, twenty-eight years ago. _He _ was the reason. She has no more reasons.

* * *

"Was it worth it, Nymphadora?" she asks softly. (She is still forty-four. Nymphadora is still pregnant, but now she is what Andromeda might have been had she come crawling back.) Andromeda feels like Druella, like she's never felt like Druella before. She can feel her mother's words through her—this is _exactly_ what Druella would have said to her, had she come crawling back, six months pregnant and lonely and cold. _Was it worth it, Andromeda_?

Nymphadora sniffles out a yes (her daughter has always had her pride, Hufflepuff or no), and curls up in the corner miserably.

And, suddenly, Andromeda knows she would have done the same thing. Had Ted left her (she _loathes_ the monster, now) six months pregnant and alone, she would have gone back to her parents and when Druella would have asked _was it worth it, Andromeda_? Andromeda would have said yes, over and over and over again.

It is then that she knows she made the right choice twenty-four years ago. Druella is long dead, but Andromeda will still defy her, even now, even now when her daughter is crying over a broken heart, even now when Ted is dead. Even now.

* * *

Nymphadora names the baby Theodore and they call him Teddy.

Andromeda is forty-four. This year of her life is everlasting.

The monster comes back. Andromeda is not brave enough to look at him. (Ted never came back.)

* * *

Andromeda is forty-six. And _her baby is dead_. Nymphadora is dead. Twenty-six and dead.

(When Andromeda was twenty-six, she learned she would never have children again. Now she's lost her baby.)

Teddy is _screaming_.

Andromeda might just join him.

* * *

She is fifty and has a five year old. Andromeda receives a letter addressed to her in the neat cursive she would recognize anywhere—it is Narcissa's writing, even thirty years later.

She meets her sister for tea. Teddy stays with Harry, and Andromeda doesn't tell anyone where she's going. (They don't need to know. They don't need to know that she is meeting a _traitor_ for tea, they don't need to know that she still loves the traitor, because _she is her sister_ and that has not changed, bravery be damned.)

* * *

She is seventy and Teddy is twenty-five.

She is tired.

When she lies down to sleep that night, she doesn't get up the next morning. The warm white light is nothing if not welcome: she has her sisters, she had Ted, she has Nymphadora.

She has everything she gave up, and she is at peace.

* * *

She is forty-six and _her sister is dead_. Bellatrix is dead. Forty-eight and dead.

(When Andromeda was five, she thought Bellatrix was brave. That hasn't changed.)

Teddy is _screaming_.

Andromeda might just join him.

* * *

AN2: thank you for reading. Please leave your thoughts on your way out.


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